Karate Kid Quail

Mystery photo (answer at end of post):

Spring has truly sprung.   The birds have gone wild:

This is a Karate Kid / Dirty Harry quail, leering at me with a ‘go ahead, make my day’ stare, ready to kick my head off with his one good remaining foot:

And the animals have come out of Winter hibernation:

And we have a bazillion-bunch of flowers!   These are some amazing 4 color Clematis we almost cut down in early spring because the branches looked dead:

This flower picture is interesting, our first yellow rose, next to the house looking over the back yard.   If you look close (click for a bigger pic), you can see two birds flying past.  This photo was done with a ‘HDR’ option on my camera which takes two photos, different exposures, then combines them.  It came out kind of like the birds have shadows … in the sky!

I have a more flower pictures here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/brucewinter/House_flowers

https://picasaweb.google.com/brucewinter/House_flowers_unknown

If anyone recognizes any of the flowers in that 2nd group, let me know. I’m trying to learn their names, so I don’t offend them.

We have had lots of fun visits in the last month, starting with our friends Vlad and Maria from New York City.  We got them addicted to the buckyball magnets:

We touristed Temple Square:

And a visitors center where this little girl was visiting with Jesus:

Then Mom and Dad came for their first visit!

Mom brought some Irises and very kindly helped me tame a bunch of other flowers:

And then took a well deserved break:

We took our first swim with them. Dad took this photo of me taking my first dive (ok, 2nd, camera lag got the first one):

Noah came the next weekend.  You may recognize Mom’s hand in that floral arrangement:

Irena and Boris have been very busy.  After finishing the remodeling of their house, they rebuilt their back yard, adding a gazebo and 20+ rose bushes:

Abby is helping Irena inventory her cloths, hoping to find a place to sell them:

Helen’s fascination with cactus has spread to our backyard.  She is convinced she can grow, harvest, and eat these nasty guys:

I have another picture taken a few minutes later of Helen trying to suck out cactus needles from her fingers, but she wouldn’t let me post that one.  After that, she put on gloves.

Bruce

 

That mystery photo:  It is a water droplet from this photo of a wild snapdragon from our backyard.   Through it, you can kind of see an upside down fence and bushes:

 

Happy Toad Eating

The snow finally stopped, so I’ve been learning how to run a pool.  Not swimmable yet, but getting there.   To help manage the solar water heater on the roof, I’ve started instrumenting the house.  I put a weather station by the bird feeder so the birds can help me keep an eye on it:   

And the neighborhood cats keep an eye on the birds:

And I keep an eye on the mountains!  This is a view of our house from our neighbors deck across the street:

Nick came for a visit, on his way to a summer in CA:

We hiked 22 miles on his new 5 fingered shoes, including a trip to an observation deck at the top of an LDS building downtown:

The temple is closed to outsiders, but they have a model of it in a visitor’s center.  If you look close in the lower left, you will see 12 oxen under a basin used for proxy Baptisms, allowing after death Baptisms to relatives who never had a chance to learn the LDS gospel:

One of our hikes was up a mountain just north our house.  It was a beautiful sunny day, so sunglasses were out in full force:

The snow slowed us down about 5 miles in:

The 5 fingered shoes require periodic stops to thaw out the toes:

Here is another toe thawing strategy Nick tried:

Nick found a happy toady, and he was hungry:

But the toad remained happy even in ‘face’ of almost certain death.    So he let him go.   

We invented bouncy ball on a Congo drum chess:

 

We had a nice visit with Tim, Abby, and Luke:

As well as a visit from friend Philadelphia Helen:

Helen’s co-worker Pega showed us wonderful swimming pool on top of a hotel at Alta, one of the nearby ski resorts:

For you iphone users, you gotta try Microsoft’s PhotoSynth app.  It allows you to easily create 3d’ish panoramas.   Here are a couple:

•  Living room 
•  Backyard 

Here are the less exciting but still fun 2d versions:

Bruce

8 foot Muenster cheese

We had a couple of pretty snowfalls this month:

It melted fast.   Here the camera caught snow falling from the power line:

Our backyard is remarkably private.  This is one of the few places in town I found where you can see it, about 3 miles away.   You need a high res monitor, middle, 1/3 from the left:

Power lines do have one nice feature (other than delivering power I suppose) … birds like them:

California Quail is pretty common all around Salt Lake:

This bird is admiring a jet landing at the SLC airport, upper right:

We setup a motion activated night camera to inventory our various nighttime visitors.   Helen posted a 2 minute picture video here:

 http://www.youtube.com/user/mollybloom756

The raccoon keeps stealing the cat food … he is insatiable!  We switched to daytime only cat food, to discourage hoards of midnight masked bandits.

Aya came for a weekend visit:

She brought her friend Aria.  They made me delete the music video I took of their drum/ukulele concert:

This is Helen’s office … note the cactus garden … they are everywhere!

Aria only brought thin/low shoes, so I gave her a tour of some nice snowbanks:

Se was happy to get back to dry land:

This morning the sunrise was really pretty on the Kennecott open pit copper mine across the valley (2002 Olympic Speed skating oval in the lower right):

In 100+ years, it (the mine, not the oval) has produced more copper than any other mine (over $1 billion a year of various metals), is also the deepest open pit mine in the world at 3/4 mile deep.

Here are a few more scenic photos from our backyard:

I’m having fun hiking up nearby trails.  I coaxed Helen up one last weekend:

I’ll close with a challenge and a mystery photo.   The challenge is to beat this 8 foot Muenster cheese string (I’m standing on the kitchen counter):

The mystery photo:

Bruce

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Photo mystery: 

Actually, I’m not sure what it is either.  I found it in our backyard, rotated 90 degrees, hanging on a spider web.  My best guess is it was made by a dog loving, ice saw wielding, artistically gifted, ice sculpting spider.